Opening up the Solution Space: The Role of Analogical Thinking for Breakthrough Product Innovation

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the approach of analogical thinking for product innovation. We collected data on projects from four engineering firms where analogical thinking was successfully applied for the development of breakthrough innovations. Results show that abstracting the problem by in-depth technical and contextual analysis is pivotal when searching for analogical solutions. Furthermore, the chances of identifying highly novel analogous solutions are increased if the problem is abstracted to the level of its structural similarities to other settings. We also found that the identification of structural similarities is supported when firms not only rely on the cognitive abilities of the individual but also employ an active search based on abstract search terms. Based on these insights, we propose a process model for the development of product innovations by means of analogical thinking.